RE: Symbols for chemical bonds

From: Asmus Freytag (asmusf@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Wed Mar 30 2005 - 11:22:29 CST

  • Next message: Ernest Cline: "RE: Symbols for chemical bonds"

    At 08:16 AM 3/30/2005, Ernest Cline wrote:
    > > > Since bond symbols are often used in chemical formulas inside texts
    > > > it would seem natural to encode them as characters.
    > >
    > > I would tend to disagree. Chemical bond indicators appear to be
    > > graphical and not textual. In particular, the fact that they cannot be
    > > confined to a line of text causes me to reach that opinion.

    What we all agree on is that we don't want to try to define a plain-text
    rendition of 2D diagrams. However, there exist in-line versions.

    Something of the form

    CH2=CH2

    in contrast to

    CH3-CH3

    would definitely fit the definition of in text use. For music, we've
    even coded the symbols so they can be cited (in isolation from musical
    scores) in text. I've definitely seen examples of texts showing
    distinctive symbols in running text when discussing 2-D structure diagrams.
    Such use would be analogous.

    > >
    > > While there may be some things in the ESGrid worth encoding in Unicode,
    > > the chemical bond glyphs are not among them in my opinion.

    I'd prefer to base such arguments on a sampling of the evidence, i.e.
    representative publications.

    A./



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